Share Your Shame: Domino (2005)

A movie geek talking about their DVD collection is like a first year sociology student talking about any current event; once they start you can’t shut them up and at some point they will mention The Matrix. However, within that collection always lays a shameful admission of poor judgement, my first being Tony Scott’s Domino.

How I came to have a copy of this 2005 clanger will be revealed later but I actually find it a more shameful admission than possessing desert island romp Three, starring Kelly Brook and then lover Billy Zane.

Domino is ‘sort of’ based on the true story of British model-cum-TV bounty hunter Domino Harvey – a woman who shoots guns, smokes cigarettes, has a funky Toni & Guy haircut and doesn’t take guff from anyone, especially men who don’t think she’s tough.

How are you awful, Domino?  Let us count the ways.

Domino is played by then up-and-coming starlet Kiera Knightley, who I hate more than a Nazi. Not only is Knightley lacking in ability, boobs and charisma but I am also sick of the campaign waged since 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham to convince men and lesbians that she’s “sexy.”  At least with Three…I mean…Kelly Brook.

Despite a terrible script with awful expositional narration, this film attracted some cool ensemble actors, including Lucy Lui and the legendary Christopher Walken. Walken appears as a Warner Bros executive in a scene where a TV show of Domino’s life is called ‘drivel’, intentionally mirroring the film itself.

Directed by Tony Scott – the younger brother of Sir Ridley – here we get some of his worst work, making The Taking of Pelham 123 look like The Narrow Margin. Oversaturated and underexposed scenes graded with a sickly yellow does nothing to detract from the rhythmically-challenged editing, unneeded slow-motion, and the overuse of the close-up! With a film starring wooden Knightley and the Botox bruiser Mickey Rourke, playing a character where his boxing bruised mug adds nothing to the character’s pathos, the medium shot should be home.

However, long before Domino descends into a tsunami of bullets and blood, the continual hand-held shake makes Domino a nauseating mess trying to be cool – like a 50 year old wearing a leather jacket or the Rizzle Kicks.

So that’s my first DVD shame, a horrible action-bio-pic thing, starring talentless people and directed by a not so great Scott. It mars my nearly spotless movie collection, all because a certain flat mate couldn’t pay his rent, leaving the rest of us to pay up and take whatever of value was in his room.  Obviously, there wasn’t much.

Trailer

Andraé Alexander